I do not know if you were joking but I think this is a hybrid style engine. I do not know a lot about this sort of stuff but the Wikipedia entry provided this interesting point:
Behind the pre-cooler, the SABRE system consists of a number of different engine components, each tuned to a different portion of the flight. SABRE uses two "pure" rocket engines surrounded by a ring of smaller engines similar to ramjets. It looks like this design is a combination of rocket engines and ramjets.
The performance section of this is most interesting though:
The designed thrust/weight ratio of SABRE ends up several times higher--up to 14, compared to about 5 for conventional jet engines, and just 2 for scramjets. This high performance is a combination of the cooled air being denser and hence requiring less compression, but more importantly, of the low air temperatures permitting lighter alloy to be used in much of the engine. Overall performance is much better than the RB545 engine or scramjets.
The engine gives good fuel efficiency peaking at about 2800 seconds within the atmosphere. Typical all-rocket systems are around 450 at best, and even "typical" nuclear powered engines only about 900 seconds.
The combination of high fuel efficiency and low mass engines means that a single stage to orbit approach for Skylon can be employed, with air breathing to mach 5.5+ at 26 km altitude, and with the vehicle reaching orbit with more payload mass per take-off mass than just about any non-nuclear launch vehicle ever proposed.
Like the RB545, the pre-cooler idea adds mass and complexity to the system, normally the antithesis of rocket design. The pre-cooler is also the most aggressive and difficult part of the whole SABRE design. The mass of this heat exchanger is an order of magnitude better than has been achieved previously; however, experimental work has proved that this can be achieved. The experimental heat exchanger has achieved heat exchange of almost 1 GW/m^3, believed to be a world record. Small sections of a real pre-cooler now exist.
The losses from carrying around a number of engines that will be turned off for some portion of the flight would appear to be heavy, yet the gains in overall efficiency more than make up for this. These losses are greatly offset by the different flight plan. Conventional launch vehicles such as the Space Shuttle usually start a launch by spending around a minute climbing almost vertically at relatively low speeds; this is inefficient, but optimal for pure-rocket vehicles. In contrast, the SABRE engine permits a much slower, shallower climb, air breathing and using wings to support the vehicle, giving far lower fuel usage before lighting the rockets to do the orbital insertion. And there it is. That's why a vaporware tag might be applicable, this is still just a 'plan' and not actually in production right now. Still, it is massively safer to test prototypes of this than a scramjet or ramjet. That's one thing good going for it.
If they can pull off that precooler and heat exchanger, they're in business.
According to their budget sheet (133 page PDF warning), their proposed budgetary resources for 2008 is $433 million.
As I haven't been following the news very closely, does anyone know where this $20 billion will go?
I, like many Americans, am ghastly concerned with how my government spends money. I hope that the FCC doesn't pull an M.C. Hammer and put spinners on their pocket protectors or pass out diamond studded platinum iPods to all of its friends. Will this money be put under control of congressional spending? Will this money be put in a fund to supply the FCC with emergency regulation cash?
You're going to suddenly have over 40 times the amount of resources you normally have. Even if they went nuts and ordered yet another all marble Parthenon-dupe building in DC they couldn't burn all this cash. Please don't be stupid.
Ok, so let's keep ripping on those foreign drugs even though the article mentions several times that this is also a problem on the mainland. It mentions several times that Puerto Rico is the epicenter of drug plants, shouldn't it have a higher number of incidences? Do they even do a ratio of incidences to plant comparisons. Honestly, they're under FDA inspection, just like all the U.S. plants.
Tainted Pills Hit US Mainland How about a title more like "Tainted Foreign Pills Meet Tainted Pill Level Requirements on Mainland." What's the matter? Not quite as hard hitting and blood boiling at those damned cheap non-U.S. labor supporting foreign pills killing somebody?
So where's the story here? These paint flecks kill somebody? You want the FDA to get anal retentive on your medications, fine. Just realize those expensive drugs are going to get a little more expensive and sick people who are poor might not be able to afford them anymore.
Honestly I've heard of worse things being found in food than this.
aparently from the Bureau of Slowly and Painfully Working Out The Obivous. Either that or John Madden is writing headlines for Slashdot. Can he really top this gem?
"Hey, the offensive linemen are the biggest guys on the field, they're bigger than everybody else, and that's what makes them the biggest guys on the field." - John Madden And, as it turns out, yes you can. The key to being energy efficient is using less energy!
When a company that used to be a monopolist is now one of the staunchest defenders of openness, I really do hope there is no hidden agenda here. "One of the Staunchest defenders of openness?" Oh, come now. Can you really use such a superlative for a commercial company? I'm sure the raving Richard Stallman would take that title in a heart beat. I submit to you a recent hardship I have endured involving the Rational suite of tools that IBM now owns and produces.
Our management forced us from subversion to clearcase. I am not impressed. Most painful was the loss of the goal stat-scm in subversion that allowed me to (with a few keystrokes) weekly publish the results and standings of all the classes, members and files in the projects. We're talking heat maps, personal performance, unit test case coverage and just about anything--ANYTHING--you could ask for in metrics. And the amount of work I did to achieve that functionality was negligible. On clearcase, I can't even get a lines of code count. Nothing.
So off I went looking for ways to interface with the clearcase VOB to poll this data from the server. Wouldn't you know it, I came up empty handed. I called up my toolsmith and he told me I was trying to "make ClearCase something it's not." It was clear then, I was working for the tool, the tool wasn't working for me. If you are the 'staunchest defender of openness' don't you think you'd publish specs on how to communicate and gather meaningful data from the ClearCase server & VOB for your users? If they do, I haven't found it. Don't even get me started about ClearCase having a dying embrace on my piece of crap Windows work box's kernel land. Why that needs to be modify kernel files (for some reason it shows up in my control panel) to be installed, I'll never know.
Don't get me wrong, you're right in that they've come a long way. Hell, look at how they defined UML 1.0 and opened that up. But there are some types of files in Rational Rose that I still can't figure out how to write or produce in a reporting manner.
So until they open their file formats and communications protocols (I really hope it's just a matter of not having it adequately documented), please don't go around titling them among the 'staunchest defenders of openness.' They may have that title commercially but I could list a number of individuals in the open source world that would easily win that title.
I support the software as a service model and believe that all our tools should be shared and open source. IBM promotes that in certain areas as best I can tell but there is definitely room for improvement.
I just read an article about them passing the two billion transistor mark for a single chip. The BBC announcement mentions many of these transistors are used for memory (the caches I assume). I am not a hardware expert although I wonder if this new phase-change memory is what they are using. Highly unlikely since this seems to be brand new research. If not, I certainly look forward to them integrating this into their chips and dies for use in caching--they could be blowing Moore's Conjecture out of the water! Exciting stuff for hardware nuts!
If this is followed by reports of various despicable actions in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious. Meanwhile a U.S. effort to bring aid to the Kurds has been proven successful. "Operation Dredge Massive Underwater Machete" has stated that its peaceful goals have been accomplished and will slowly pass the rest of Iran's coast in a return to its base in India.
You must be a blast at parties eldavojohn: Excuse me, ma'am, I couldn't help but notice you chose to wear Crocs to this party. Party Goer: Oh yes! Do you like them? eldavojohn: Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to take a look at this matrix of quality I recently had an independent group do. *pulls out a sheet of paper* eldavojohn: You see, while you have some strange perception of them being 'cute' & 'fashionable' my data indicates that they received a 1/10 in both odor and appearance. Which puts them just below wooden clogs. *the woman writes 0% on the paper* eldavojohn: What's that? Party Goer: The odds that I'll sleep with you tonight. eldavojohn: Well, that's ok because after further research among my colleagues I've discovered it's also the probability you're STD free.
Gaming is so subjective that there is no single "greatest" system ever. Well put. And yet we attempt a discussion.
What disappoints me massively here is that there is no establishment of values. Have you ever done a trade study? Why weren't the performance parameters isolated and discussed between consoles? Instead, all I saw was opinionated statements often tied to nostalgia with little or no scientific basis.
It's not even discussed about what the delivery method is (cartridge or disc) or even whether doing something well in 8-bit is more desired than something bad in 32-bit. Hardware maintenance, sound capabilities, exclusive franchise titles, I could probably come up with 10 or so factors in deciding how to rank my consoles. Then I would define the scales and think of a novel way to weight them (probably by year and technological limitations).
Last but not least, I would need someone with enough time to play through all of them. Most importantly, this subject(s) would need to be non-interested meaning they have no previous gaming experience. And yet, I don't even see an attempt for this article to do the above while trying to forget that Donky Kong Country entertained them for months in their past.
Why will pong always be better than NES Contra for my dad? Because it was his generation's game. Why is NES Contra always better for me than Souped Up Console Gears of War? Because that was my generation's game. Why will Gears of War always beat Super Lucid Brain Implants Choco Serial Murder Hospital Mystery for my... well, you see this trend now.
If you want me to be impressed with a comprehensive study, I expect a cold hard naive matrix and not some subjective highly tailored prose laden essay written by an avid gamer.
And the message to government is this: ISP responsibility is not a luxury for possible contemplation in the future. It is a necessity for implementation TODAY - by legislation if voluntary means fail.
There's more exciting music being made and more listened to than at any time in history. Cheap technology has made it easy to start a band and make music. This is a gathering of managers; our talented clients deserve better than the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have been treated in the digital age. Yes, they deserve the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have always been historically treated by their record labels and managers.
I haven't heard any artists speaking out about their royalties drying up. Maybe because they made 10 cents on the dollar before and now they make 10 cents on the quarter now since it's all digital?
Funny how he starts with "We've been used to bands who wrote their own material since the Beatles..." and neglects to remind us that we've been used to corporate engineered bands that don't even play their own instruments since The Monkeys. Look at their songs, who wrote them? Today, there are even more bands/artists being used as icons to promote music and styles they didn't even think of.
Is he complaining that Steve Jobs pulled the $1 per song price out of his ass? No, he's pointing the finger at file sharers. This guy is losing his income and his bands are probably curious as to how they can get that $1 per song from iTunes without having to pay their manager 40 cents for... for... what exactly did he have to do with that transaction again?
Earth to U2's Manager: take your cut of the work you actually do like arranging concerts and press coverage and then shut the hell up and let the artists do their thing and make money.
Unfortunately, the MPAA has yet to release the actual reports that generated either the 44 percent or 15 percent claims about the role of college students in digital piracy; the public data are limited to PowerPoint graphics in PDF format on the association's web site. MPAA Secretary: I'm almost done authoring the report on college file sharing piracy ruining the movie industry, sir. I just need to know what number the researchers found in their study. Dan Glickman: Researchers? We're an organization of lawyers, not scienticians! We make the numbers, not find them. But it can't be too high or it will be unrealistic and people will ask questions but the higher it is, the more blame we can put on it. MPAA Secretary: 50 percent? Dan Glickman: Too high, go lower. MPAA Secretary: 30 percent? Dan Glickman: Higher. MPAA Secretary: 40 percent? Dan Glickman: Higher. MPAA Secretary: 45 percent? Dan Glickman: Lower. MPAA Secretary: 41 percent? Dan Glickman: Higher. MPAA Secretary: 42 percent? Dan Glickman: Higher. MPAA Secretary: 43 percent? Dan Glickman: Higher. MPAA Secretary: 44 percent? Dan Glickman: Ding ding ding! MPAA Secretary: But sir, that's a lot of money, what if they ask questions? Dan Glickman: Oh, grow up, it's in PowerPoint! PowerPoint is never wrong. Rocket scientists don't even question what's in PowerPoint! What is your problem?
In all seriousness though, I've drawn up solutions on green engineering paper in the middle of meetings with pencil and everytime my boss hated it. But if I went back to my desk and made a box with a computer pointing to another box full of fecal matter in PowerPoint, management gobbles that right up without asking any questions.
... lawyer who apparently is unable to engage any of the numerous detective firms out there who could find his information for much less... Unable? I thought exactly the opposite when I read this. I think this Niro lawyer probably wants people to know he's taking this route. I figured it was a lawyer showing his true colors. He's making a public announcement that typically comes from gangsters who have grown too powerful. It is something to the effect of:
"I am the law. I have so much money and disposable income that I pay any problem away without batting an eye. You want to start a blog criticizing me? Well, this is how I deal with you. I don't have time for warrants and regular channels. I will find out who you are and make you pay. Let this be a lesson/example for the rest of you." And that, my fellow Americans, is the stench of corruption. Fix it or face becoming a victim yourself.
Truth is a defense for libel. Yeah, but what about 'truthiness'? If Niro, Jabba, Hutt & Niro hope to pursue litigation, how do they deal with someone who has a gut feeling that what they are doing is generally wrong?
After reading his blog it's evident that this bounty is the only thing this lawyer can do. This blogger is good with what he writes and knows his limits. They won't be able to force blogspot into divulging that info without a warrant in my opinion though I am not a lawyer, I still have a soul.
Have they tried asking Mr. Troll Tracker nicely? He lists his e-mail as trolltracker@gmail.com...
This reminds me of the time Richard Stallman offered a half eaten french fry and all the change he could find in all the couches of MIT's student commons area for the identity of an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot that called him a "tree hugging bearded hippie."
that's what, like 10 cents here in America. Sweet, sign me up! It's $4.97 in USD.
Remember all that news about the U.S. dollar falling in the global market and all those morons were talking about it? Yeah, well, it actually turns out to have an impact in you making fun of how poor Canada is.
This is ancient early 90s news but Brooklyn has been the site of nuclear waste storage and it concerns many citizens. There is a warehouse there called Radiac Research Corporation that has about enough nuclear material for one atom bomb, although I'm sure it's not refined to that. Citizen watch groups have formed that will walk around the streets with Geiger counters. You will find some shock reporting that has somethings factual and a lot of things anecdotal evidence. If you do watch those videos, ironically pay attention to the state employed inspector on the boat. Hard numbers and comparisons with other major cities are a must to make any effect in this kind of reporting. Still, I would be upset if stuff like this dried up. I think it's important so that the community at least feels like it has an independent non-interested voice--I would risk false alarms for that any day.
I've also heard from other sources that New York City offers permits for polluting which isn't so wrong except that some of these are ridiculous. A lot of the rivers and streams to this day still are being polluted but since the companies are 'grandfathered' into pollution control, they can keep doing it. Do you ever think they're going to clean that up? I hardly think so.
So they want to avoid false alarms that could cause a mass panic. But like a lot of things there is a trade off and the trade off is the ability to independently verify that the air quality or radiation levels are indeed safe. If I were a citizen living there, losing the latter in and of itself would cause me panic. Poor means you're at risk of being ignored & treated like you don't matter and I don't think New York City (especially historically) is any different from the rest of the world.
I'll stick with Gentoo. Load what I use, don't load what I don't. This is sage advice for you and I. However, we constitute maybe 0.05% of the populace (I do not mean to be elitist). You may find me on the other side soon in the unwashed 99.95% of the populace as I once enjoyed spending a whole Saturday installing a new Linux distro or "emerging" and acquiring a few new packages I didn't have.
I do not have this kind of time anymore. The other day I received an e-mail from a friend. He wanted to know how he could get the absolute most out of his hardware for a very specific game he plays (World of Warcraft). I began with recommending plain old Linux and then installing wine and trying to run it. But I soon realized how hopeless this would be as I think he has a nice ATI card that once was top of the line five months ago.
So I told him to get a fresh XP install and not install anything else on it. Perhaps this MinWin or core of a Windows will satisfy him? Perhaps it will also satisfy me in finding simplicity in an operating system that can run my games and programs that are only for win32?
As the person who asked the question ...
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Joel Hodgson Answers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I asked the question about the split. As a huge fan and native Minnesotan, I was hoping to hear that they often get together to watch movies in a large group and make fun of them. I was hoping they were still pals. I was hoping that friendship was more important to them than their own personal endeavors. I am probably horribly wrong living in a delusional world but it would have been nice to hear otherwise.
Man, in retrospect, my questions sounded like I was a greedy asshole. Not what I was hoping to convey to someone I admire and like so much.
The preview clip of Cinematic Titanic I saw seemed to be right out of MST3K and the humor seemed spot on. I've ordered the DVD but it hasn't come yet. From what I've seen and heard, it's everything we need to be children again. Of course, I've enjoyed Rifftrax & The Film Crew, I'd probably love anything these guys do today.
In a world where my 25 years spent here have become exponentially complex, I need these guys. I really do.
MSFT shares are up 3% today after another strong rise yesterday, after announcing their financial results and outlook. Yeah, I noticed that on MSN Money when I was running at the gym last night. The reason they cited that was strong Vista sales. That's not what I've heard on Slashdot.
Now I know he's a Microsoft robot but on the otherside of this issue is Ed Bott who cites adoption rates. Of course there are other factors like Vista being forced down people's throats.
You have to admit, the stories we're hearing just don't add up. People can spin this like Vista's a flop or success. I'm guessing it's par for the course and Microsoft is doing fine. My company will be shoving Vista onto my workstation in a year and it's hear to stay.
Do I like Vista? Not at all. That still doesn't mean I should live under a rock in denial.
I once heard a much older person refer to the language of Goodfellas as "pornographic." I corrected her saying the f-word isn't referring to anything sexual--in fact those men in that movie view it as an interjection or part of speech and nothing more. She ended up winning the argument as there are two definitions for pornographic:
1. Containing an explicit depiction of sexual activity.
2. Depicting something in details, usually unnecessarily. She pointed out that it was an almost gratuitous manner in which they used curses and was probably unnecessary to tell the story. That could probably be arguable but she likened that swearing to people using the bathroom. Everyone does it but we don't see it in movies unless it's got an important plot point (see Pulp Fiction or Unforgiven).
So, to relate this to the story, if Fox News is accusing Mass Effect of 'depicting something in details, unnecessarily' then I guess the game could be described as pornographic in nature. Indeed, some of the games today have such vivid detail that is not necessarily needed for the plot... but, a very enjoyable side effect, it makes it seem completely and utterly real. Perhaps these details are necessary then?
One thing you must admit, there might be this gradual transition that we need to draw a cut off line at. Where we used to sit and play the original NES and play 8-bit, low detail Guantlet we can now sit and play PS3 high def red warrior needs blood Gauntlet. I went from shooting pixelated nothings to full upright three dimensional beings. Where does the video game become so real that it is a rated R movie in and of itself? If the argument is to make Mass Effect accessible only to 17 & 18 year old people, then I don't see a problem with this argument. Did Fox over sensationalize what was going on and mislead the public? Yes, of course, that's their job! It sells.
I'm just sad that nobody is approaching this from a neutral point of view and actually doing some objective journalism on this topic. Perhaps objectivity is no longer possible in this debate...
Any web-based favorites you'd like to point out for fellow commenters? Disclaimer! I am not your average American looking for a mindless laugh or entertainment! The channels I suggest here are probably not something a lot of people would normally enjoy watching.
For my artsy, music & avante garde stuff, I prefer SpecialTen, a UK DVD magazine I actually subscribe to. They offer their stuff for free though and I find it all to be either thought provoking, fun or both.
For my documentaries and also music stuff, I prefer VBS although I have heard many criticisms of it playing to hipsters and wanna be hipsters. This may be although I find the material interesting.
While they are nice and work well in Firefox (I watch them both in Linux), I find some of the reporting to be over the top shock reporting and also find the advertisements to be repetitive. I have seen the trailer for There Will Be Blood too many times to count and I THERE'S OIL HERE, UNDERNEATH THE TOWN AND I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN GET AT IT... sorry, what was I saying? I black out every now and then from watching a lot of internet TV.
Of course, I enjoy adult swim, the office, south park, the daily show, etc but you just go to the network sites for that stuff and I assume everyone knows that. And, of course, now that they're releasing the cap for Netflix, I will watch those online although I can't seem to get that to work in Linux. Perhaps they'll come around?
I do look forward to the responses to this in hopes to lengthen my list of channels.
I saw something similar to this this weekend as I was riding a bus to NYC. A billboard in Delaware or some other state said "FREE $50 When You Join!" referring to a casino membership. But in very fine print (hilariously fine for the size of the billboard) it said, "Money must be spent inside the casino within a half hour of joining." I remember thinking to myself, that sure is free.
How free is something when you're told what to spend it on? How free is money when it goes into a fund that invests in the United States companies and stock markets and you can't control that fund?
My answer would be 'not very' but, you know, when you see these 'donations' from the rich like Bill Gates, that seems to be the case every single time. I'm glad they're getting something, I'm upset about the strings attached. Better than nothing, yes. But sounding more and more like a fishy tax loophole or legacy purchase (he'll go down in history as a philanthropist no doubt) every day.
I am by no means an expert or historian on Bobby Fischer's life. I once admired him. Sadly, for Mr. Fischer, I always wished that his past caught up with him and he would forget his new found convictions.
From an admirable chess player early on, he showed signs of mental instability. But really, who hasn't from time to time? He made absurd demands to move Moscow closer to the ocean or make the sun set sooner for his convenience when he appeared at the famous game. I've read accounts that make him sound borderline autistic. Although he seemed to have much more cognitive powers... usually.
I wish I could erase the last half of Bobby Fischer's life from history. I wish he never touched a radio station's microphone. His proclamation that the September 11th attacks were "wonderful news" and calling for the US to be destroyed, his several radio aired remarks against Jewish peoples and other disparaging remarks. Was this for attention? Was this really what he believed? I'm not sure what personally made him feel this way but living in Iceland under political asylum was not the way I wanted to see it end.
Unfortunate that he died. Even more unfortunate that he never came around to apologize and promote chess in schools and everywhere. We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity. Rest in peace, Bobby Fischer.
I've been working on a financial application... Yes, or he could learn from movies like Office Space and Superman 3 and edit the software so that it moves the fractions of cents lost in transactions to an unnamed bank account.
Also, drop the 'But they'll send me to Federal pound me in the ass prison' attitude.
Slashdot Mirror
The performance section of this is most interesting though: The designed thrust/weight ratio of SABRE ends up several times higher--up to 14, compared to about 5 for conventional jet engines, and just 2 for scramjets. This high performance is a combination of the cooled air being denser and hence requiring less compression, but more importantly, of the low air temperatures permitting lighter alloy to be used in much of the engine. Overall performance is much better than the RB545 engine or scramjets.
The engine gives good fuel efficiency peaking at about 2800 seconds within the atmosphere. Typical all-rocket systems are around 450 at best, and even "typical" nuclear powered engines only about 900 seconds.
The combination of high fuel efficiency and low mass engines means that a single stage to orbit approach for Skylon can be employed, with air breathing to mach 5.5+ at 26 km altitude, and with the vehicle reaching orbit with more payload mass per take-off mass than just about any non-nuclear launch vehicle ever proposed.
Like the RB545, the pre-cooler idea adds mass and complexity to the system, normally the antithesis of rocket design. The pre-cooler is also the most aggressive and difficult part of the whole SABRE design. The mass of this heat exchanger is an order of magnitude better than has been achieved previously; however, experimental work has proved that this can be achieved. The experimental heat exchanger has achieved heat exchange of almost 1 GW/m^3, believed to be a world record. Small sections of a real pre-cooler now exist.
The losses from carrying around a number of engines that will be turned off for some portion of the flight would appear to be heavy, yet the gains in overall efficiency more than make up for this. These losses are greatly offset by the different flight plan. Conventional launch vehicles such as the Space Shuttle usually start a launch by spending around a minute climbing almost vertically at relatively low speeds; this is inefficient, but optimal for pure-rocket vehicles. In contrast, the SABRE engine permits a much slower, shallower climb, air breathing and using wings to support the vehicle, giving far lower fuel usage before lighting the rockets to do the orbital insertion. And there it is. That's why a vaporware tag might be applicable, this is still just a 'plan' and not actually in production right now. Still, it is massively safer to test prototypes of this than a scramjet or ramjet. That's one thing good going for it.
If they can pull off that precooler and heat exchanger, they're in business.
According to their budget sheet (133 page PDF warning), their proposed budgetary resources for 2008 is $433 million.
As I haven't been following the news very closely, does anyone know where this $20 billion will go?
I, like many Americans, am ghastly concerned with how my government spends money. I hope that the FCC doesn't pull an M.C. Hammer and put spinners on their pocket protectors or pass out diamond studded platinum iPods to all of its friends. Will this money be put under control of congressional spending? Will this money be put in a fund to supply the FCC with emergency regulation cash?
You're going to suddenly have over 40 times the amount of resources you normally have. Even if they went nuts and ordered yet another all marble Parthenon-dupe building in DC they couldn't burn all this cash. Please don't be stupid.
So you know, considering that most paint today is safe enough to use as a food coloring, in sunscreen or even toothpaste, I would prefer my elderly grandma consume the paint flecks accidentally with her medication instead of not being able to afford the medication.
So where's the story here? These paint flecks kill somebody? You want the FDA to get anal retentive on your medications, fine. Just realize those expensive drugs are going to get a little more expensive and sick people who are poor might not be able to afford them anymore.
Honestly I've heard of worse things being found in food than this.
Our management forced us from subversion to clearcase. I am not impressed. Most painful was the loss of the goal stat-scm in subversion that allowed me to (with a few keystrokes) weekly publish the results and standings of all the classes, members and files in the projects. We're talking heat maps, personal performance, unit test case coverage and just about anything--ANYTHING--you could ask for in metrics. And the amount of work I did to achieve that functionality was negligible. On clearcase, I can't even get a lines of code count. Nothing.
So off I went looking for ways to interface with the clearcase VOB to poll this data from the server. Wouldn't you know it, I came up empty handed. I called up my toolsmith and he told me I was trying to "make ClearCase something it's not." It was clear then, I was working for the tool, the tool wasn't working for me. If you are the 'staunchest defender of openness' don't you think you'd publish specs on how to communicate and gather meaningful data from the ClearCase server & VOB for your users? If they do, I haven't found it. Don't even get me started about ClearCase having a dying embrace on my piece of crap Windows work box's kernel land. Why that needs to be modify kernel files (for some reason it shows up in my control panel) to be installed, I'll never know.
Don't get me wrong, you're right in that they've come a long way. Hell, look at how they defined UML 1.0 and opened that up. But there are some types of files in Rational Rose that I still can't figure out how to write or produce in a reporting manner.
So until they open their file formats and communications protocols (I really hope it's just a matter of not having it adequately documented), please don't go around titling them among the 'staunchest defenders of openness.' They may have that title commercially but I could list a number of individuals in the open source world that would easily win that title.
I support the software as a service model and believe that all our tools should be shared and open source. IBM promotes that in certain areas as best I can tell but there is definitely room for improvement.
I just read an article about them passing the two billion transistor mark for a single chip. The BBC announcement mentions many of these transistors are used for memory (the caches I assume). I am not a hardware expert although I wonder if this new phase-change memory is what they are using. Highly unlikely since this seems to be brand new research. If not, I certainly look forward to them integrating this into their chips and dies for use in caching--they could be blowing Moore's Conjecture out of the water! Exciting stuff for hardware nuts!
Party Goer: Oh yes! Do you like them?
eldavojohn: Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to take a look at this matrix of quality I recently had an independent group do.
*pulls out a sheet of paper*
eldavojohn: You see, while you have some strange perception of them being 'cute' & 'fashionable' my data indicates that they received a 1/10 in both odor and appearance. Which puts them just below wooden clogs.
*the woman writes 0% on the paper*
eldavojohn: What's that?
Party Goer: The odds that I'll sleep with you tonight.
eldavojohn: Well, that's ok because after further research among my colleagues I've discovered it's also the probability you're STD free.
What disappoints me massively here is that there is no establishment of values. Have you ever done a trade study? Why weren't the performance parameters isolated and discussed between consoles? Instead, all I saw was opinionated statements often tied to nostalgia with little or no scientific basis.
It's not even discussed about what the delivery method is (cartridge or disc) or even whether doing something well in 8-bit is more desired than something bad in 32-bit. Hardware maintenance, sound capabilities, exclusive franchise titles, I could probably come up with 10 or so factors in deciding how to rank my consoles. Then I would define the scales and think of a novel way to weight them (probably by year and technological limitations).
Last but not least, I would need someone with enough time to play through all of them. Most importantly, this subject(s) would need to be non-interested meaning they have no previous gaming experience. And yet, I don't even see an attempt for this article to do the above while trying to forget that Donky Kong Country entertained them for months in their past.
Why will pong always be better than NES Contra for my dad? Because it was his generation's game. Why is NES Contra always better for me than Souped Up Console Gears of War? Because that was my generation's game. Why will Gears of War always beat Super Lucid Brain Implants Choco Serial Murder Hospital Mystery for my
If you want me to be impressed with a comprehensive study, I expect a cold hard naive matrix and not some subjective highly tailored prose laden essay written by an avid gamer.
There's more exciting music being made and more listened to than at any time in history. Cheap technology has made it easy to start a band and make music. This is a gathering of managers; our talented clients deserve better than the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have been treated in the digital age. Yes, they deserve the shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have always been historically treated by their record labels and managers.
I haven't heard any artists speaking out about their royalties drying up. Maybe because they made 10 cents on the dollar before and now they make 10 cents on the quarter now since it's all digital?
Funny how he starts with "We've been used to bands who wrote their own material since the Beatles
Is he complaining that Steve Jobs pulled the $1 per song price out of his ass? No, he's pointing the finger at file sharers. This guy is losing his income and his bands are probably curious as to how they can get that $1 per song from iTunes without having to pay their manager 40 cents for
Earth to U2's Manager: take your cut of the work you actually do like arranging concerts and press coverage and then shut the hell up and let the artists do their thing and make money.
Dan Glickman: Researchers? We're an organization of lawyers, not scienticians! We make the numbers, not find them. But it can't be too high or it will be unrealistic and people will ask questions but the higher it is, the more blame we can put on it.
MPAA Secretary: 50 percent?
Dan Glickman: Too high, go lower.
MPAA Secretary: 30 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 40 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 45 percent?
Dan Glickman: Lower.
MPAA Secretary: 41 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 42 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 43 percent?
Dan Glickman: Higher.
MPAA Secretary: 44 percent?
Dan Glickman: Ding ding ding!
MPAA Secretary: But sir, that's a lot of money, what if they ask questions?
Dan Glickman: Oh, grow up, it's in PowerPoint! PowerPoint is never wrong. Rocket scientists don't even question what's in PowerPoint! What is your problem?
In all seriousness though, I've drawn up solutions on green engineering paper in the middle of meetings with pencil and everytime my boss hated it. But if I went back to my desk and made a box with a computer pointing to another box full of fecal matter in PowerPoint, management gobbles that right up without asking any questions.
... lawyer who apparently is unable to engage any of the numerous detective firms out there who could find his information for much lessAfter reading his blog it's evident that this bounty is the only thing this lawyer can do. This blogger is good with what he writes and knows his limits. They won't be able to force blogspot into divulging that info without a warrant in my opinion though I am not a lawyer, I still have a soul.
Have they tried asking Mr. Troll Tracker nicely? He lists his e-mail as trolltracker@gmail.com
This reminds me of the time Richard Stallman offered a half eaten french fry and all the change he could find in all the couches of MIT's student commons area for the identity of an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot that called him a "tree hugging bearded hippie."
Remember all that news about the U.S. dollar falling in the global market and all those morons were talking about it? Yeah, well, it actually turns out to have an impact in you making fun of how poor Canada is.
This is ancient early 90s news but Brooklyn has been the site of nuclear waste storage and it concerns many citizens. There is a warehouse there called Radiac Research Corporation that has about enough nuclear material for one atom bomb, although I'm sure it's not refined to that. Citizen watch groups have formed that will walk around the streets with Geiger counters. You will find some shock reporting that has somethings factual and a lot of things anecdotal evidence. If you do watch those videos, ironically pay attention to the state employed inspector on the boat. Hard numbers and comparisons with other major cities are a must to make any effect in this kind of reporting. Still, I would be upset if stuff like this dried up. I think it's important so that the community at least feels like it has an independent non-interested voice--I would risk false alarms for that any day.
I've also heard from other sources that New York City offers permits for polluting which isn't so wrong except that some of these are ridiculous. A lot of the rivers and streams to this day still are being polluted but since the companies are 'grandfathered' into pollution control, they can keep doing it. Do you ever think they're going to clean that up? I hardly think so.
So they want to avoid false alarms that could cause a mass panic. But like a lot of things there is a trade off and the trade off is the ability to independently verify that the air quality or radiation levels are indeed safe. If I were a citizen living there, losing the latter in and of itself would cause me panic. Poor means you're at risk of being ignored & treated like you don't matter and I don't think New York City (especially historically) is any different from the rest of the world.
I do not have this kind of time anymore. The other day I received an e-mail from a friend. He wanted to know how he could get the absolute most out of his hardware for a very specific game he plays (World of Warcraft). I began with recommending plain old Linux and then installing wine and trying to run it. But I soon realized how hopeless this would be as I think he has a nice ATI card that once was top of the line five months ago.
So I told him to get a fresh XP install and not install anything else on it. Perhaps this MinWin or core of a Windows will satisfy him? Perhaps it will also satisfy me in finding simplicity in an operating system that can run my games and programs that are only for win32?
Man, in retrospect, my questions sounded like I was a greedy asshole. Not what I was hoping to convey to someone I admire and like so much. The preview clip of Cinematic Titanic I saw seemed to be right out of MST3K and the humor seemed spot on. I've ordered the DVD but it hasn't come yet. From what I've seen and heard, it's everything we need to be children again. Of course, I've enjoyed Rifftrax & The Film Crew, I'd probably love anything these guys do today.
In a world where my 25 years spent here have become exponentially complex, I need these guys. I really do.
Now I know he's a Microsoft robot but on the otherside of this issue is Ed Bott who cites adoption rates. Of course there are other factors like Vista being forced down people's throats.
You have to admit, the stories we're hearing just don't add up. People can spin this like Vista's a flop or success. I'm guessing it's par for the course and Microsoft is doing fine. My company will be shoving Vista onto my workstation in a year and it's hear to stay.
Do I like Vista? Not at all. That still doesn't mean I should live under a rock in denial.
2. Depicting something in details, usually unnecessarily. She pointed out that it was an almost gratuitous manner in which they used curses and was probably unnecessary to tell the story. That could probably be arguable but she likened that swearing to people using the bathroom. Everyone does it but we don't see it in movies unless it's got an important plot point (see Pulp Fiction or Unforgiven).
So, to relate this to the story, if Fox News is accusing Mass Effect of 'depicting something in details, unnecessarily' then I guess the game could be described as pornographic in nature. Indeed, some of the games today have such vivid detail that is not necessarily needed for the plot
One thing you must admit, there might be this gradual transition that we need to draw a cut off line at. Where we used to sit and play the original NES and play 8-bit, low detail Guantlet we can now sit and play PS3 high def red warrior needs blood Gauntlet. I went from shooting pixelated nothings to full upright three dimensional beings. Where does the video game become so real that it is a rated R movie in and of itself? If the argument is to make Mass Effect accessible only to 17 & 18 year old people, then I don't see a problem with this argument. Did Fox over sensationalize what was going on and mislead the public? Yes, of course, that's their job! It sells.
I'm just sad that nobody is approaching this from a neutral point of view and actually doing some objective journalism on this topic. Perhaps objectivity is no longer possible in this debate
For my artsy, music & avante garde stuff, I prefer SpecialTen, a UK DVD magazine I actually subscribe to. They offer their stuff for free though and I find it all to be either thought provoking, fun or both.
For my documentaries and also music stuff, I prefer VBS although I have heard many criticisms of it playing to hipsters and wanna be hipsters. This may be although I find the material interesting.
While they are nice and work well in Firefox (I watch them both in Linux), I find some of the reporting to be over the top shock reporting and also find the advertisements to be repetitive. I have seen the trailer for There Will Be Blood too many times to count and I THERE'S OIL HERE, UNDERNEATH THE TOWN AND I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN GET AT IT
Of course, I enjoy adult swim, the office, south park, the daily show, etc but you just go to the network sites for that stuff and I assume everyone knows that. And, of course, now that they're releasing the cap for Netflix, I will watch those online although I can't seem to get that to work in Linux. Perhaps they'll come around?
I do look forward to the responses to this in hopes to lengthen my list of channels.
I saw something similar to this this weekend as I was riding a bus to NYC. A billboard in Delaware or some other state said "FREE $50 When You Join!" referring to a casino membership. But in very fine print (hilariously fine for the size of the billboard) it said, "Money must be spent inside the casino within a half hour of joining." I remember thinking to myself, that sure is free.
How free is something when you're told what to spend it on? How free is money when it goes into a fund that invests in the United States companies and stock markets and you can't control that fund?
My answer would be 'not very' but, you know, when you see these 'donations' from the rich like Bill Gates, that seems to be the case every single time. I'm glad they're getting something, I'm upset about the strings attached. Better than nothing, yes. But sounding more and more like a fishy tax loophole or legacy purchase (he'll go down in history as a philanthropist no doubt) every day.
Woody Allen: Waiter, there is a DARPA robotic fly in my soup!
Waiter: Don't worry sir that GRU robotic spider on your bread will soon get him!
I am by no means an expert or historian on Bobby Fischer's life. I once admired him. Sadly, for Mr. Fischer, I always wished that his past caught up with him and he would forget his new found convictions.
... usually.
From an admirable chess player early on, he showed signs of mental instability. But really, who hasn't from time to time? He made absurd demands to move Moscow closer to the ocean or make the sun set sooner for his convenience when he appeared at the famous game. I've read accounts that make him sound borderline autistic. Although he seemed to have much more cognitive powers
I wish I could erase the last half of Bobby Fischer's life from history. I wish he never touched a radio station's microphone. His proclamation that the September 11th attacks were "wonderful news" and calling for the US to be destroyed, his several radio aired remarks against Jewish peoples and other disparaging remarks. Was this for attention? Was this really what he believed? I'm not sure what personally made him feel this way but living in Iceland under political asylum was not the way I wanted to see it end.
Unfortunate that he died. Even more unfortunate that he never came around to apologize and promote chess in schools and everywhere. We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity. Rest in peace, Bobby Fischer.
Also, drop the 'But they'll send me to Federal pound me in the ass prison' attitude.